Routers are electrical devices that are used to permit computers and networks of computers to pass data back and forth. A router typically has one or more input ports and one or more output ports. Data packets containing a destination address arrive on an input port. Based on the destination address, the router forwards the data packet to an appropriate output port which may be connected to the destination computer system or to another router. The data being transmitted between routers may be confidential (e.g., bank account data in the context of a bank's network) and thus the security of such data should be ensured. Accordingly, at least some routers provide encryption to allow secure communications across an untrusted communication channel, such as the Internet.
Additionally, some such routers provide additional security to protect the configuration of the routers themselves. Such configuration protection measures may operate by requiring that a configuration device be coupled to a router to establish communication pathways between routers. A configuration device may include encryption keys specifying how encodings are to be used between routers. Such a system of routers may be further secured by ensuring that the inter-router encryption keys are randomly created, and thus cannot be duplicated. While resulting in enhanced network security, such measures may make network maintenance burdensome. If a configuration device must be replaced, or a new router added to the network, a complete set of configuration devices must be generated. Flexible methods of generating configuration devices while maintaining system security are desirable.